New Asus Laptops Are The Thinnest, Lightest, And Most Powerful Ever

For Asus, at least. Ahead of Computex 2017, the computing giant has shown off three new laptops that push the envelope in performance and design — and that means if you're in the market for a new machine, there's a good chance it might be one from Asus.

The highlight of Asus's mini-show was the ZenBook Flip S (UX370), which it says is the world's thinnest convertible laptop. It's a proper laptop, too, running Windows 10 and powered by a new Core i7-7500U processor from Intel and with up to a 1TB PCIe SSD under the hood, but it's less than 11mm thick. No price for it yet, but the $US1099 starting price translates into circa-$1500 in Australia.

Its 13.3-inch screen can also be specced up to 4K resolution, and it's of course also a touchscreen — which makes sense since its hinges rotate a full 360 degrees. That display is nearly borderless, too, which reduces the ZenBook Flip S' overall size massively. If you don't need dedicated graphics, the Flip S looks like it'll be pretty tempting as an everyday, multipurpose laptop-tablet hybrid.

In its performance-focused Pro line, Asus has bumped up specs significantly with the latest ZenBook Pro (UX550) — most notably by including Nvidia's desktop-equaling laptops graphics cards alongside equally gutsy quad-core Intel Core i7-7700HQ CPUs. I'm an unabashed fan of the price-performance ratio of Nvidia's entry-level GeForce 10-series chips and to see them in such a skinny laptop is an impressive feat.

If you like the sound of that, here's the better part — the 15.6-inch ZenBook Pro is just 18.9mm thick and weighs 1.8kg, putting it well into the fighting class of competitors like Razer and Aorus. That display is a 4K one, of course, and the graphics come courtesy of Nvidia's not-too-shabby GTX 1050Ti — which won't have the power to run that 4K display at native resolution during gaming, but should handle lesser titles like Dota 2 or League of Legends with no sweat.

Sitting in between the two is the ZenBook 3 Deluxe, a 1.1kg and 12.9mm thick Apple MacBook competitor built around a 14-inch display and with all the power that you could ask for from such a skinny device — fast SSD, fast Intel Core i7 CPU, dual Thunderbolt 3 support over USB-C and the like. Those specs make it the world's thinnest 14-inch laptop, apparently.

Asus also took the opportunity to introduce something it calls the Blue Cave — a Wi-Fi router with dual-band 2600Mbps 802.11ac support, but without any obvious spiky antennas sticking out of the top. Rather than looking like a computing appliance, the Blue Cave is an odd-looking monolith of sorts — almost like a miniaturised washing machine without the door — that Asus thinks will look more appropriate in your living room.

One thing conspicuously missing from Asus' presser, though? Its adorable — and now, maybe never to see the light of day — ZenBo home assistance robot. [Asus]

Gizmodo traveled to Computex as a guest of Dell.

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